Ube Mango
Reviews written by Ube Mango
A nice place with pleasant ambiance and a chance to sample vegetarian food influenced by the cuisines of the world.
This is a nice place with mostly friendly service and mostly good food. That is to say most of the time you come here you will have friendly service and good food. One of the nicer vegan friendly restaurants in the downtown area. Most of the others are a bit seedy or they aren't vegan friendly and you'll need to go to Midtown.
Same menu as their other locations, but a completely different feel to the place. I find this location a little less communal, so I come here when the focus is more on the people I arrive with, even with a large party. Enjoy!
I agree with all of the other reviews, even the one saying this is for yuppies and the food can be found in vegan cookbooks. For me this is one of the reasons I liked the restaurant, coming from out of town without the ability to cook, this was as close as I could ever expect to eat out and eat as if I had done the cooking. Since I humbly think my own cooking is wonderful, I could think nothing less of the food here.
This is a nice quiet and exotic location for having a meal. The flavors of everything I ate ranged from higly exotic to highly familiar. I ate the lunch buffet and everything except two meat dishes was vegan. Truly an adveture for your taste buds, though I though the food was a bit overcooked. Similar to what you see at some Indian restaurant buffets.
These folks are very friendly, even in the cold and wet! The honkin' size is truly large! That said, there is only one type of burrito, and only one type of tortilla (wheat), and the beans are a bit bland. Make sure you get plenty of love sauce and salsa as they are the highlights of their burritos.
This is a fantastic restaurant and a true gem in the Thai restaurant universe. They offer brown rice, which I use as a proxy for vegetarian understanding, or rather the ability to make things taste great without using meat as a flavor. I was unable to determine if they use fish sauce, so if someone else can find that out and report back that would be helpful.
I can see how people have varied ratings as to customer service as it varied during the one meal I was there (lunch). Luckily for me they were very nice and helpful. This is a little vegan oasis in downtown and yes it could use some more adventurous attitude when it comes to flavors and dishes, but for what it is I was thankful as an out of towner trapped amongst other places that were not as vegan freindly even though they might have been tastier. Their desserts however are yummy.
Feb 11
Good food, and good deals for lunch. My only issue is the lack of vegetables in many of the dishes in lieu of fake meat. Otherwise, one of my favorite places to go near downtown Oakland.